(I} } 4j I ,A. \ '. " \ \L f, : ':. ; , ..a . - ..;' , .. ' . .--;, -., .. . " . 26 feet or so of reinforced concrete," said Mr. W., with neighborly pride. He took us back to his office. In the hallway outside, we passed a large desk lying on its side, its drawers scattered about, and Mr. Weinstein said he thought it had belonged to William Waldorf Astor Our antiquarian interest satisfied, we relaxed in to a specialized discussion of the sartorial present. Mr Weinstein revealed that eight formal-wear man ufacturers, Includ- ing West Mill Clothes, of which he is treasurer, and representing nine- ty-five per cent of the purely formal-wear in- dustry, had, at his in- stigation, formed the Institute. "We used to get together two or three at a time, at the luncheon table, and discuss the ills of the industry," he said. "We realized that ever since the war men had been get- ting careless about their clothes, and we wondered what we could do about it. Well, we decided to band together to make men feel that they should wear the clothes the occaSIon demands. We felt it would help the guy who dresses up, as well as the industry. It has got so the man in a tuxedo or a tail suit often feels he's out of place. The proper thing would be for the man in a business suit to feel out of place. A man wearIng a business suit at an evening party doesn't feel as chipper and gay as a man in formal dress anyhow. Personally, the minute I get into my tuxedo, my mood changes. My own experience is that when I put on a tuxedo, I have a lot of fun. It's sort of a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing, I guess." Mr. Weinstein, who was wearIng a brown suit and seemed reasonably cheerful under the circumstances, be- lieves that men look even better in tails than in tuxedos. "There are times when a man should wear tails and nothing else but," he said: "At strictly formal night weddings and at diplomatic receptions. At formal dances, positively. I feel like a real big shot when I wear tails. The proper dress adds an air of confidence, and a feeling of confidence." Midnight-blue dinner coats or twilight-blue ones in tropical- weigh t goods are better than black, Mr . Weinstein told us, because black dyes are often a mixture of brown and green and tend to revert to one or the other of these colors, or both, after the garment has been worn a number of years. "But the tailcoat must always be black," he stated flatly . "Ten years ago, we tried some in Burgundy and soft green. They flopped. They just stood up and died." We asked how about the current plaid-dinner-coat vogue, and Mr. Weinstein looked distressed. "The plaid is all right for a host coat, but it has no place in gatherings outside the home," he said. "That's my own thinking on it. We make the coats, but, frankly, I discourage their sale, because 1 don't think they're proper. I think they'll bounce back on us." He looked off into space. " H . d a ve you ever notIce a bunch of kids dressed up for a prom in their tuxedos?" he asked. "What a nice picture they make! In dunga- rees, you wouldn't gIve a darn for the whole caboodle." As we made our way out, skirting the Wilham Waldorf Astor desk, Mr. W. said, "Do you know why, accordIng to one theory, men have buttons on their sleeves? Because they used to wipe their noses on their sleeves. So women put the buttons on. I'm a skeptic when it comes to such matters. They say the reason the cutaway is cut away is so a guy could reach his sword easily, but I'm not sure even about that. I do know, though, that whereas a lot of women in evening dresses look at each other with sort of suspicious eyes, a group of men in evening clothes are all pals, and it's conducive to having a . " gay evenIng. ð!1 Aelurophobe AS background for the following, it n. must be known that the cast of "Bell, Book and Candle" includes a cat, to which Miss Lilli Palmer, the show's ranking witch, occasionally addresses herself. Very well. The other day, a lady customer approached the "Bell, Book and Candle" box office and asked if it was possIble to get a seat from which the cat couldn't be seen. Being ad vised that it wasn't possible, she hesitated briefly and then went wistfully on her way. Venezuela in the Bronx T HE prospect of seeing a bit of Venezuela in the Bronx sent us to the BotanIcal Garden greenhouses one morning last week, there to inspect, in the knowledgeable company of Dr. MAY 5,1951 Bassett Maguire-a Garden curator who recently returned from his seventh expedition to the mountain plateaus of Venezuela-a natIve hut of the ::vIaqui- ritare Indians, a tribe inhabitIng the lowlands and jungles of the Upper Ori- noco and the Ventuari, as well as such Maquiritare products as baskets, flutes, cassava graters, spindles, calabashes, and blowguns. Ducking our head, we fol- lowed Dr. Maguire into a rectangular, palm-thatched lean-to, furnished chiefly with a couple of hammocks woven of wIld Venezuelan cotton. He observed that he had lived in huts like it for six months. "This was m} hammock," he said, fingering one of the pair. "It took me a week to get used to my bed after getting back-it seemed so fiat. " We emerged from the hut, and he intro- duced us to Mr. Richard S. Cowan) one of two youthful Garden technical assistants who had been on the expedi- tion with him. Mr. C. stated that the party had lived handsomely off the country, on rice, cassava, beans, tapir, and chiguiri, a tasty rodent the size of an enormous guinea pig. "I don't mean to be sensational," he said, "but chiguiri has the texture of pork, only more ten- der. It tastes like chiguiri." He glanced at his watch. "1 guess it's time for me to give a blowgun demonstration," he said resignedly. Accompanied by Dr. Maguire, we followed Mr. Cowan to an adjoining greenhouse, where, in the neighbor- hood of a sign reading, "Demonstra- tions of Venezuelan Indian Blowguns at 11 A.M. and 3:30 P.M. daily," a hun- dred noisy school children had assem- bled. "Y ou all have to be very quiet," said Mr. Cowan, picking up a twelve- foot blowgun. A shatterìng hubbub greeted this admonition. Mr. Cowan discussed blowgun manufacture for three or four minutes, during whIch his audience became increasingly restive. "The Indians poison the darts with curare," he said. Silence fell. There wasn't a peep as he observed that a poisoned dart could kill a monkey in . d . fi " I ' two mInutes, an a man In ve. t s O.K. to eat an animal killed with a poisoned dart, because the poison has to get in your blood stream to do you any harm," he said. More silence. He blew some darts-non-poisoned, he said- into a target with astonishing velocity. "Thousands of school children have come to these demonstrations; boys are making hlowguns all over the Bronx," Dr. Maguire told us calmly, and led the way to a display of Maquiritare prod- ucts back near the native hut. "These flutes were made from the thIghbones